


Paperwork and Problems

by junko



Series: Scatter and Howl [17]
Category: Bleach
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 03:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3920419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Renji and Byakuya settle back into life at the Division.  Things seem to be going well.  Until they don't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paperwork and Problems

**Author's Note:**

> Ha! And YOU thought I was only going to post Bazz-B/Renji smut! Well, tah-dah, here's some soap for ya, too!

Renji and Byakuya soaked in the hot springs for a long time, not really saying much. The tenderness of their reiatsu play hung in the air between them, making the silence comfortable and relaxed. Renji would have loved to stay there all day, but he knew he was already late for his shift.

He pulled himself out of the water. Byakuya glanced up. “I’ll see you at lunch?”

“Sure,” Renji smiled. “Looking forward to it.”

Byakuya nodded, seeming more subdued than normal. It’d been a rough morning for them, and Renji blamed himself entirely. So, he crouched down by the lip of the sento and kissed the top of Byakuya’s head. “Hey, I love you, you know.”

Byakuya graced Renji with a soft smile. “I know. And I love you, too.”

#

Nanako didn’t seem at all bothered by Renji’s lateness. She waved off his apologies with a question, “How did it go with Ichigo yesterday?”

The other shinigami in the room hushed, expectantly. It always surprised Renji how much the rest of the Soul Society was invested in Ichigo’s life. He supposed it made sense. No other soul had made quite such a dramatic entrance in a long, long time, and Ichigo’s arrival had changed everything for so many. 

“Well,” Renji said, as he settled into the Human World-style swivel office chair behind the lieutenant’s desk, “I wasn’t exactly privy to the bedside awakening—you know, because, private—but Rukia told me he was in good spirits. That kid is all heart. He’s happy to have given it all for us.”

There were nods like people expected as much of the in/famous Ichigo Kurosaki.

Nanako finished tacking up the latest duty roster and said, “So how is Rukia?”

Renji grunted and tugged on his ear. “Yeah, no. About how you’d expect. Ichigo can’t see her at all any more. Not even a ghostly flicker.”

“Is she going to visit in a gigai?”

That was the billion yen question in Renji’s mind, too. He shrugged. “If he were my… erm, friend, I would. But, it’s hard to know what’s best. Is seeing us going to just make his life worse? Ichigo finally has a chance to be Human. Maybe he should try to just, you know, live a normal life.”

Kinjo, who’d been leaning against the Third’s desk, eating a bowl of nattō, shook his head. “After all the things he’s done and seen? No way.”

Renji nodded. It was an impossible situation. Ichigo was not the type to back down from any fight, large or small, but he was walked wounded. He’d be a liability in any Hollow fight, having been rendered virtually blind, deaf, and dumb. And, any time one of them visited, they’d be inviting more Hollow activity into the area. At the same time, just dropping him like a stone after he pulled their collective asses out of the fire… that seemed like a shit way to treat a veteran. He could understand Rukia wanting to make a clean break, because she might not see him again for seventy or eighty years. It wouldn’t be fair to ask him to wait a literal lifetime, especially since the trauma of death would wipe all his memories of her from his mind, anyway.

“Eh,” Renji said, picking up some papers to sort. “I’ve got other interests in the Human World, so I’m planning on dropping by to check in now and again. If Ichigo tells me to sling my hook, I’ll respect that.”

That seemed to satisfy everyone listening in. What else could a friend do? There weren’t a lot of shinigami in comparable situations, but dealing with combat injuries was part and parcel of their lives. Some people wanted to be left alone during recovery; others needed hands held. You had to respect the individual, especially when their duty had come at a high cost. Healers could fix a lot, but there were always some things that could only be stabilized. Only Orihime could regrow limbs. The Fourth took them in, the amputees, and… well, some of them just wanted a clean break from all their Gotei friendships. The shame of being reduced to a scullery maid was too much to bear otherwise and with all the underground work, regular soldiers never had to interact with them.

It was kind of spooky, honestly. There but for the grace of fate go I, Renji thought uncomfortably. Hell, this was half the reason he kept getting up when he was gravely injured. He’d far rather die on his feet than have to live half a life like that.

After giving Zabimaru a reassuring pat, Renji bent his head over his work. For once he was grateful that he was two days behind.

#

Sometime around lunchtime, Renji stuck his head into the captain’s office. “How’s things?” he asked, as he slipped his sandals off at the door.

Byakuya didn’t bother looking up from his paperwork. “My family continues to drive me insane,” he said with a small sigh. “I hoped they’d all leave quietly, but there’s been so much commotion and last minute business to attend to, I snuck away from the estate early. I’ve actually been in the office for several hours.”

Renji didn’t mention that he already knew that. The gate guards had reported Byakuya’s early arrival in the Division, and Renji had kind of assumed Byakuya had just needed an escape from the craziness at the estate. After all, the captain of the bodyguards had been in Renji’s office not once, but three times, this morning with ‘demands’ from various Kuchiki for shinigami honor guards. He’d finally hammered out a deal with her that she could just go ahead and take any unseated officer that volunteered, but the Kuchiki coffers had to cough up at least half the overtime pay. If she wanted seated officers, Kuchiki had to pony up a decent extra pay package and compensate the Division for staff hours lost. No surprise, they’d be low on unseated officers for the next several weeks.

Still, it worked out for the Division. Unseated were usually thirsty for adventure and it was often denied them in favor of people with more skill. It became its own vicious circle, because how could you ever get any experience, if you were never allowed to do anything even halfway dangerous or exciting?

After closing the office door against the chill, Renji came over and tucked the day’s paperwork into Byakuya’s inbox. He hadn’t meant to, but Renji’s eye glanced down at the correspondence on Byakuya’s desk. “You’re writing to Isoroku’s wife?”

Byakuya quickly covered the letter. “Yes.” Renji waited, but Byakuya offered nothing else. And he refused to look at Renji, turning, instead, to ring for the servants. “I’ll call for lunch.”

Oh, like _that_ wasn’t suspicious. 

Renji settled down in his usual spot. “Okay, so what is it you don’t want me to know?”

Byakuya glanced up at him. Irritation flicked briefly through his face. “Renji, the point of me not wanting you to know is that I _don’t_ want you to know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Renji smiled. “So what is it?”

Byakuya frowned. 

“C’mon, it can’t be that bad,” Renji coaxed. “It’s not like I don’t know you paid my fee. We got over that, didn’t we?”

Byakuya’s face noticeably tightened. So it had something to do with the payment? It wasn’t like Byakuya would have trouble ponying up a million ken, so it couldn’t be a problem with that, could it? Renji was pretty sure he’d have heard something from the staff if the Kuchiki coffers were running dry. Besides, even without all the silk worm farms, forges, and such, the Kuchiki still had some mighty lucrative tea houses. Renji should know. Aunt Masama had offered him one, when she’d been hoping to pay him off. He’d seen the monthly stipend he could’ve been living on. 

So, it couldn’t be that.

Something else to do with the tribunal, then? If the letter had been to the Head Captain, Renji would figure maybe there would be some blow back militarily, like some asinine charge of ‘behavior unbecoming’ or some such. But, it had been to the wife….

What business did Byakuya have with his ex’s wife?

Byakuya had told him about the fact that she’d been a suitor, but Renji thought all those loose ends had been tied in a nice bow when she married someone else. She might be bitter though, having to settle for someone not-quite-Kuchiki status. 

“Did she threaten you with blackmail?” Renji wondered, even though he was damn sure the Kuchiki had some kind of written, formal policy regarding all the potential blackmail situations a family like theirs might find themselves in. They’d have to, right? “Something to do with us?”

“Why did you go there, of all places, Renji?” Byakuya wanted to know. His voice sounded even and vaguely disappointed, so Renji figured maybe he’d guessed wrong, after all.

“I don’t know,” Renji shrugged. “Seems likely as anything, I suppose. So, if that’s not it, what is it?”

Byakuya’s lips went thin. “I am holding back a very rude comment about a dog on a scent.”

“Well, you didn’t hold it back very far,” Renji laughed. 

Setting aside the paperwork that he’d used to hide it, Byakuya set the letter in front of himself again. “If you must know, I have paid them off. The both of them. I’m sick of it, Renji. I would pay away my entire fortune if I could quell all the vicious gossip and hurtful… bullshit.”

Bullshit?

Look at Taicho, getting all swear-y. He must be really upset. 

In fact, Byakuya’s language shocked Renji out of his initial burst of righteous indignation. He still had some objections, but he took a moment to frame them. “Well,” he said finally, after several moments, “Is it going to work? I mean, I got no experience in this kind of thing outside of protection rackets, and I can tell you that never, ever worked like it was supposed to. More money you threw at the yakuza, the more they asked for. And they didn’t never show up when the other guys beat you senseless, neither.”

Byakuya glanced down at the letter he was writing, frowned, and then glanced up to meet Renji’s gaze. “Political debt is a different animal. Many alliances are forged by this sort of backroom dealing and have been for centuries. There are still many debts paid millennia ago that my family honors, for instance.”

Renji nodded. Byakuya could very well be right. After all, it wasn’t like there was another family out there with more money to offer than the Kuchiki. And there were these unspoken rules Renji knew nothing about—traditions, he supposed. Whatever it was, it was out of his pay grade. As long as Isoroku and his wife were playing by the same rules, everything was… “Hey, wait a minute, why do they need debt paid, anyways? Ain’t they got plenty of money?”

Byakuya shook his head. “Isoroku has a gambling problem, apparently.”

Oh.

Huh.

Renji felt like there was some piece of this puzzle he was still missing. On top of that, gambling problems did not seem like the kind of thing that made for a sound ‘political’ leveraging. You didn’t get over spending too much money on the dice by getting a new influx of cash.

“So you’re throwing money at a chronic gambler? That’s the plan?”

Byakuya’s mouth opened and closed several times. It finally looked like he had an answer to that when the servants arrived with lunch: unajū, a kind of charcoal grilled eel and rice bowl, only artfully packaged in a lacquer box. There were small individual bowls of miso soup and a few salted vegetables as accompaniment.

Once the servants had left and grace said, Byakuya poured tea. Tersely, he said, “You disapprove. I’m unsurprised. This is why I chose not to tell you about it.”

“Aw, be fair, Byakuya,” Renji said, dishing out the eel. “I ain’t said it was stupid. I just said I didn’t understand how it was going to work.”

“Is that not the same?”

“Not necessarily,” Renji said. The salted daikon was crisp with a hint of pepper. “I just… maybe your gamblers are different from the ones I know, okay? The ones I knew didn’t ever stop, until the mob broke them for failure to pay, you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I understand what you’re saying, Renji,” Byakuya said. “Isoroku isn’t like those people.”

“How’d he manage to get so broke he needed you to bail him out, then?” Byakuya’s face went sharp and hard, just as something new occurred to Renji, “Oi, and, how’d you find out about all this anyway? Did he confess this as part of the tribunal, or…? Oh, wait a damn minute, you didn’t bail him out of jail, too, did you?”

“Before you get all high and mighty, you should know that he was far more dangerous to us penniless,” Byakuya said. He held his tea bowl to his face and glared at Renji over the rim. “His whole… ploy with you was at the behest of Aunt Masama. She paid him to provoke you, Renji.”

“What?” Renji understood every word Byakuya said, of course, he just couldn’t believe it.

“Aunt Masama paid Isoroku to assault you,” Byakuya said again.

Grilled eel stuck like a lump in Renji’s throat. “Fuck, I hope Kurotsuchi dissects her.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, a cliffhanger! Don't kill me! The line was too perfect not to leave hanging there. Thanks, as usual, to Josey for her mad beta and typo skills.


End file.
